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15 Years Later, I’m finally getting to make direct use of that initial foray into Bradbury, as Unexpected Productions puts up the show I proposed, The Improvised Man. It’s been a really fun project to work on for me… Bradbury writes a lot of fantastic and futuristic stories, but they all depend a lot on his characters and their relationships with each other and with whatever the subject of the story is. Since these are the things that, to me, really make an improv scene work, I’m excited to see what we can do with it on stage! |
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Belgium as been awesome so far! Kevin, Susie and I flew out on Friday at 7:30 am, and arrived at 7:00 am Saturday in Brussels. Fairly uneventful flight, although a woman three rows in front of us had a stroke and was attended to by paramedics who happened to be on board. I was hungry, so I ate a banana and peanut-butter sandwich while I watched them work. From Brussels, we took the train to Leuven, and were picked up by our host, Jerome and taken to his house, which seems to have about 40 rooms, all connected by odd doors, hallways, and twisty staircases. Also, there's a room in the middle with no doors to it. Jerome says he climbed into it once, and its empty, but I don't know. Susie says she felt a presence her first night up to the bathroom. And because its Susie, it generally annoyed her by not responding to her hello. Leuven is one of those neat old walled Europeans towns, with a great town square and amazing beer. We have bicycles, and bike along a canal every day. (Considering the amount of beer we've been drinking this has made for some interesting rides home) They have the "Longest Bar in the World" which is a giant square with bars stacked side by side as far as the eye can see. They have rotating closing hours, going clockwise, so as long as you keep moving, you can stay out as long as you want. :) Sunday, we performed shortform with everyone in two groups. There's La Gata, from Columbia, Improv Melbourne, Inspinazie, from Belgium, and us. Audiences here are definitely less friendly to gagging, which is great: it leaves us room to do some more truthful exploration on stage. Monday, we workshopped, and Monday night, we performed Improvised Shakespeare with Improv Melbourne: This was one of my favorite shows I've ever done, and I left feeling super happy. (First curtain call, too!) We did a tragedy, and played it fairly dramatically, which felt great. I really love playing with the imagery and metaphor in Shakespeare. And I had a blast playing with Jason, Patty and Rama from Melbourne, who all had a great time! Yesterday, Tuesday, we workshopped again, and then performed Campfire with Inspinazie. On Sunday, they played a form called The Wake, which is derived from Campfire (although it doesn't rely on audience stories, which is integral to Campfire to me, so it felt very different). Campfire was fun, since Belgium doesn't have a tradition of sitting around a campfire and telling ghost stories. As it turns out, the audience stories were very close to what we hear in the States, so I suppose ghosts and haunts know no borders. After us, La Gata performed Chubimba (sp?), which is their action movie style. Was fun to watch, as the Columbians are very physical and aren't lazy with their mime work the way we Americans tend to be. :) Woke up early this morning, which is why I'm blogging. We're heading to Bruges today, which is supposed to be beautiful. No performances from us tonight or tomorrow: On Friday, we're performing Spoken, and I'm looking forward to it! Tony |
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Type "your name needs" (replacing "your name" with your first name) into Google. Type the first 10 things that come up. Tony needs his booboo's kissed Wow, all true! |
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Back when I was writing a lot of poetry, my standards got better much faster than my actual ability did. I became insecure, and it was easy to be jealous of other poets, dismissive of their poetry, etc. Looking back, it seems pretty ridiculous, and I can pin it to one thing. I was basically internalizing questions like "What level am I at?", "What level SHOULD I be at?", "Am I good enough?", "Am I better than X?", etc. Basically, I was trying to measure my position on some made-up graph. With improv and with illustrating, I've tried to take a different tact, and its done me a ton of good. Rather than ever trying to measure my ability against any standard or anyone else's ability, I've only let myself measure it as, "Am I getting better?" In other words, now I work at measuring my direction rather than my position. There are a ton of benefits to asking the question in this way. * It's independent of other improvisers, so I can enjoy seeing my peers do great things and not worry that it somehow shines a poor light on me. This isn't limited to creative pursuits. I like it when it comes to fitness, for instance. If I focus on, "I'm overweight", I'm stuck with a fact that takes a long time to change. On the other hand, if I focus on, "Am I losing weight?" or "Am I on my way to being in better shape?" I can go change the answer to that immediately. Of course, as we get better at something (or closer to our ideal weight), progress certainly slows down, and we have to be ready for that. I think there are some great ways of reforming the question at that point (which is not to say I've reached this point in too many areas <grin>): in some cases, I may decide I'm good with where I've gotten, and I'm going to reform the question as, "Am I maintaining where I want to be?" In more cases, though, I change the question to something like, "Am I broadening my abilities? Am I using my abilities to become better at other thing? Am I finding new ways to enjoy doing this? Am I helping others to be better?" These are different questions, but they're still ways of measuring the direction you're heading rather than the point you've arrived at. So what direction are you heading? |
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I'm picky about found art, but I really like this one: Google Translate - Fastest Rising (U.S.), 2008 1. you (Source: http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeit |
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I promised myself to look back at this post four years later, and determine how accurate my worst fears and hopes about Bush's second term were. Keeping my promise (unlike my promise to post art here!), here goes... Each fear had a positive outcome that would prove me wrong as well. Fear 1 Result: A Little Better than Feared Fear 2 Result: Better than Feared Fear 3 Result: Accurate Fear Ammended Fear: Overall Result: Tony is not the next Nostradamus. Its good to remember that the fears that develop during campaigns are usually overstated. Fears that nothing will change are likely more accurate than fears that everything will change. So my new fear for this next administration, whoever wins, is simply that not enough changes... or that changes come from crisis rather than planning. We shall see! |
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While in Arizona, I sketched a lot in my journal, and I realized I've not been good a doing so. As such, I'm going to try and post a sketch a day. My schedule means I'll probably miss days sometimes, so the rule there is that I have to catch up on Sunday. I'm not holding myself to any kind of standard. I may post sketches, paintings, posters, or even doodles some days. And I may post older sketches sometimes, just for the heck of it. While in Arizona, we came across a historical marker where they found the original Smokey the Bear, a cub who had lost his mother to a fire, and who had two burned paws. |
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Sue and I are back from our Cascade Pass to Steheikan backpacking trip... it was awesome! Now I'm preparing to take off for Arizona, for another week of hiking / backpacking with Miles Baxter, Scurge of Hexapoda. Pictures soon! When I return, I want to refocus how I use this blog. Up until now, its been a random dumping place for whatever artistic passions are currently grabbing me, along with occasional "random life" posts, like this one. I may spin off art and improv into their own sub-blogs, but I only want to do that if I can find a way to post more without taking too much time away from Sue, work, and pursuit of said artistic interests. We shall see! |
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It occurred to me today that, with my iPhone and Wikipedia companion, I finally have The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Of course, my 3g access would probably be limited from the hold of a Vogon |
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Run Windows, use Exchange as your contact server, and want photos from Facebook? (I wonder what the Venn Diagram for that looks like). Outsync matches any Outlook contacts with Facebook contacts, and associates their photos with the contact. The iPhone's exchange syncing is then smart enough to use these photos as the contact photos. It'd be nice if this was built into the iPhone, but for Windows users who use Exchange, this works pretty well. |
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I'm in the following shows this weekend: Thursday, 8:30 pm: Disaster! (This is the last Disaster! before it reopens in late August on Friday nights) Friday and Saturday, 7:00 pm: Gumwall Rally (This is our tourist friendly show, which is usually a smaller cast playing short form games--I kind of like it, as its rather informal and relaxed) As always, let me know if you're coming, and if possible, I'll get you a comp! |
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I'm "only" in 3 shows this weekend, so we can do parties for the 4th, and so I can go white water rafting on Sunday. Thursday, July 3rd, 8:30 Saturday, July 5th, 7:00 Saturday, July 5th, 8:30 |
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Forgot to send out this update... I'm in the following shows this weekend: Friday, 7:00 pm: Gumwall Rally (Tourist-targeted show) |
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The first thing that Jill Farris taught me in Improv 100 was not to bite other people. Apparently, a really shy student of hers once bit another improviser on the leg while playing a dog. Today, after waking up I remembered that sometime on Saturday night, I accidentally bit Dan in the leg. By accidental, I mean I was playing a goat, and I meant to bite his pants leg, but accidentally got his leg as well. Lesson not learned. |
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I ended up staying until 10:00 am on Sunday, so I did a total of 40 hours of continuous improv this weekend. It was an amazing experience, and one I would do again (something I didn't imagine I'd be saying this soon after doing it). The hardest parts, of course, are the hours between 3 am and 10 am, when your audience is tiny, there aren't many performers, and there's not much energy around the theater. That said, there were some cool things that came out of desperation in those hours. Overall, my favorite shows were as follows: Domino (Friday, 9:30 pm): We weren't completely sure what this form was, so the way we played it, a scene would begin, one character would step out and do a monologue. A new scene would begin with that character and all new improvisers. Silence (Saturday, 8 am): Jay put on movie score music, and we did a giant half-hour silent film with a lot of Keystone cop scenes. Laurel took one of two allowed half-hour on-stage naps during this scene, and we took the suggestion of coma for the reason. My two favorite parts were Stephanie and I blowing dandelions, moving to rubbing the yellow dandelion flowers on our hands, moving to rubbing dirt on our faces like war-paint, and Jay chasing me down, arresting me, putting me in his car, driving me to the station, throwing me in jail... a scene we repeated 4 times as I got caught doing different things over and over. Four Man Pyramid (Various Times): During research and development, we took an audience suggested name, Four Man Pyramid, and decided that the game involved the women performing without touching the floor by having them stand / sit / lie on the men, who remain flat on the floor. We liked it enough that it came back in Theatresports that night, and the in the final hour, when Jill and Suzie played a scene about bowling while standing on us. Not amazing from an artistic point-of-view, but still really funny. Kids Show (Saturday, 2 pm): We didn't have any kids, so we did a kids show for adults, which was a really fun twist. Example: from the audience lessons of not lying and not pulling hair: A brother got his sister sent to Pakistan, when he lied about pulling her hair, and accused her of lying. The guilt fairy came, Christmas Story style, and showed her in Pakistan, being held by terrorists. The redemption fairy came, and told him he had to get her back. He told his father the truth, but it was too late, and the sister had blown herself up in a puppy kennel. Maybe you had to be there... Guest Groups (Saturday, 5 pm): Improvisers from Jet City and Quiet Monkey Fight came down on Saturday afternoon, and I had a great time playing with their different approaches. In the first slot, we played CrackerProv, a form invented from an audience suggestion, which had to take place entirely in a Cracker Barrel, and every scene had to involve things falling apart (like a cracker). Black Eyed Blonde (Saturday, 9:30 pm): We've been working on Film Noir, and we were in the zone for this show, which made it one of the best Black Eyed Blonde's we've done. The key was that our fatigue and the fact we'd been doing things so long encouraged us to keep things simple and simply let the story tell itself. We got a huge response to it, which was great. Pippi Bongstockings (Sunday, 10:30 pm): That was the name of the Theatresports team consisting of Kristen, Jana, Dan, and I. Nothing specific is easy to describe here, but we had some really good scenes, and I was going on pure adrenalin, which meant my brain got out of the way, and I was much more in tune with the audience. Blood Squad (Sunday, 12:30 am): Brandon, Elicia and Michael are three of the best improvisers and Seattle, and their show, Blood Squad, is an absolute joy to watch. Getting to perform in it with them was an amazing experience: one that I didn't realize was going to happen in the improvathon, but am overjoyed did. Jana's Hair (Sometime in the haze that is Sunday morning): At a moment of sheer desperation and exhaustion, Dan and I used Jana's pigtails as characters in a puppeted scene about natural rivals. It was just odd, and for some reason, worked. We're probably not ready to go on tour, but I enjoyed it. My least favorite parts? The only two hours I really didn't like were the two blue hours. I'm fine with blue humor, but they ended up being an excuse for people to be as nasty as possible without doing any good improv. There were one or two good scenes, but overall, it was pretty crappy (literally, in our Musical titled "shit"). I would much rather do things like the Kids Show I talked about above, in which the inappropriateness is couched by a good story that people can relate to. (It also makes blue material all the more effective). Overall, though, it was a blast. For some reason, I didn't really get tired until hour 32 or so. 36 hours was the right amount of time in my book. Dan Posluns did the whole thing, and I'll bet he'll talk about it on his blog, once he wakes up! :) |
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I try not to be a curmudgeon about words... Languages change to fit the times. I was on the bus today, though, and there was a likeable guy who I would have once described as gay. Now, the closest I can get is cheerful... Happy is too internal, and gleeful is too external. Cheerful isn't quite right, though, and lacks the celebratory feel that gay has. So I demand a new word, now that gay has been recycled! :) Update: An anonymous commenter has a good replacement for this case: Jovial! |
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This weekend, I'll be performing for 36 continuous hours (if I'm able to do it), starting at UP at 6 pm. Two of my fellow improvisers will be trying for the whole 54 hours! Come check it out! |
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Thursday is the last Black Eyed Blonde at Unexpected Productions. Its improvised film noir, with full costumes, etc, and we've had a ton of fun doing it! The show is at 8:30 on Thursday, and you can get tickets online for $10, or pay $12 at the door. http://www.unexpectedproductions.org/sho |
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I have a very full improv weekend this week, with 5 shows! Thursday, I'm in Black Eyed Blonde, an improvised Film Noir at 8:30 pm at the Market Theater. Friday, I'm in Redmond, at Second Story Rep, doing short form at 8:30 pm. Saturday, I'm performing in Spoken, a long form that explores the lives of strangers (its a pretty cool show, but is hard to describe!). That's at 8:30 pm at the Market Theater. Sunday, I have two shows: Camp Fuzzywanna, a puppet show for kids 8 and younger (and their parents), at 5:00 in the Market Theater. Gumwall Rally, with short form and long form for all ages, at the Market Theater, at 7:00 pm. |
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